


i wanted to be your tomorrow so i lived today

by minwonderlust



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Childhood Friends, M/M, brief mentions of mingyu x oc and soonwoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-05 17:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16815577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minwonderlust/pseuds/minwonderlust
Summary: Wonwoo lets go of Mingyu’s hand but he will always, undeniably have a home on the skin of his palms.





	i wanted to be your tomorrow so i lived today

**Author's Note:**

> unbetaed so i apologize for any mistake you may find.
> 
> i've tried writing many fics in the past but this is the first time i actually got to finish one so i would like to thank you a whole lot if you're reading this right now.

_“Why do my hands have this letter, mom?”_

Wonwoo was three when he notices the faint lines painting an ‘M’ on his hand like mild strokes on canvas. She tells him they’re actually a ‘W’ because that’s the easiest thing she can come up with when her son lightly runs the pad of his finger over them with every bit of curiosity his body holds, sketching every stripe with the delicacy of the wind, almost afraid that it will disappear if he presses on them a little too hard. Wonwoo was also three when he first feels the fear of losing something so close to him.

He asks her next what it means and his mom tells him each of them represents the two Ws of his name. “ _You will fly high with your wondrous wings,”_ is what she says when she draws angel wings on his back. Wonwoo doesn’t understand what she means, but something about the way her lips form a small smile like the promise of a new morning tells Wonwoo it’s a good thing.

It’s when she jabs a finger at his side and it makes him laugh that he decides he wants to fly, so he does days later when he jumps from the third flight of the stairs. He earns himself an ankle sprain, and a hybrid of worry and relief disguised as scolding. His mom asks him in the middle of gentle pushes of cold compress what he was thinking, so Wonwoo answers her truthfully that he wanted to try out his wings, says he wants to know what color and how big they are.

His mom doesn’t say it when she considers that Wonwoo doesn’t think like other kids. He’s smart and she thinks that maybe it would cause him more pain in the future than just a sprain could offer.

Wonwoo doesn’t think he’s smart even when his teacher gives him a star and tells him he is, but he learns at a young age that he craves wisdom so he asks again sometime between twilight and dusk, when he watches a flock of birds fly over his head why he can’t see his wings. His mom smiles and tells him there are some things we can’t see but are there—in the creases of our shirts or in the spaces between our fingers or on the valley of our backs—always, undeniably.

And Wonwoo thinks they’re similar in a way - the wings on his back and the letter on his palm - forever a part of him.

It was a year later when Wonwoo feels a storm hit him, its strong currents blowing away every ounce of strength his wings have and stabbing a huge hole right through it when his mom gets involved in a car crash. Wonwoo doesn’t understand a lot of things, doesn’t even know what name to call the emotion that leaves a heavy weight in his chest, but he does know that it hurts. He knows it was sudden. He knows nobody was prepared for it. Not him, not Bohyuk, not even his father who has learned to understand a lot of things before.

It was when Wonwoo was four, a year after he first feared about losing something close to him, that he learns the hard way how it actually feels. But like the wings on his back and the letter on his palm, his mom will always be a part of him, maybe even more than he is a part of his own.

Spring turns to summer and summer turns to fall but Wonwoo still doesn’t understand. His father learned to understand a lot of things, even this, so he helps him understand too. He tells him that sometimes people leave even if they don’t want to, that they would stay if they can, that it would hurt but it would heal.

Wonwoo thinks he already understands but fall turns to winter and winter turns to spring and it still hurts.

\--

Wonwoo first meets Mingyu when all ten of his tiny fingers were still enough to count their ages combined. He tells Mingyu he is five by showing his right hand, palm held out just inches from Mingyu’s face. He’s too focused on the canine sticking out from Mingyu’s mouth so he doesn’t see the way Mingyu’s eyes trace the lines of his skin forming an ‘M’.

It’s when Mingyu wraps his even smaller fist around Wonwoo’s thumb to show him that he is four that Wonwoo learns that people go, but they could also come.

That’s how Mingyu manages to come hurling into Wonwoo’s life—brazen and unmindful. And Wonwoo welcomes him like how you would the beginning of a new year, with arms and heart wide open, bared for everyone to see.

Wonwoo didn’t know that at the age of five, someone as bright and breathtaking as Mingyu could make him scared, because at that age, Wonwoo has yet to find out that brazen and unmindful could refer to hurricanes too.

\--

It’s in school, when Wonwoo could no longer count his and Mingyu’s ages combined with the fingers of both of his hands that Wonwoo realizes he wants to write. He pretty much still wants to fly, but now he wants to write about how it feels like before, during, and after his wings take flight.

He is twelve and Mingyu is eleven when he decides he wants to write, and the first thing he writes about is his friendship with Mingyu.

He gathers his paper and pen (a green one because it’s Mingyu’s favorite color. Wonwoo finds it out when Mrs. Kim bakes cupcakes and asks them both which colors they want for the icing. He chooses purple and Mingyu decides on green. Wonwoo asks his best friend why and he tells him that it’s his favorite. Wonwoo asks him again why because Wonwoo is nosy like that, and Mingyu answers that it’s because he loves the green shirt Wonwoo gave him for his 8th birthday, because pistachio is green and he loves that he gets to eat one with Wonwoo during Fridays after school, because he thinks green matches well with purple like how he matches well with Wonwoo.) and tells the blank sheet in front of him of stories about anything and everything Wonwoo and Mingyu he could think of.

He allows his hand to speak in muted words, ones only he could hear, about how much he likes that Mingyu would give him the last piece of strawberry his dad prepares for them whenever Mingyu comes over, how Mingyu snuggles close to him like a puppy even when Mingyu tells him he resembles a cat, and that dogs and cats should hate each other but they don’t because _“you’re my best friend, Nonu”_ , about how much he hates the fact that Mingyu doesn’t call him hyung or Wonwoo, hates that he actually doesn’t hate it because Mingyu calls him Nonu and he gets the privilege of being the only one to call him Minggu.

He writes a thousand other things about his friendship with Mingyu that it feels a little too intimate to let anyone see, even Mingyu, so he folds the paper and keeps it safe between the pages of his favorite book.

Wonwoo has a sharp memory but he forgets what his mom once told him: there are things that exist but we can’t see. So when Wonwoo sets aside what he’s written, he doesn’t realize that he’s keeping something else. He doesn’t realize that something’s already brewing inside his chest that he doesn’t want Mingyu to see. But it’s there—faint and quiet, but only growing stronger and louder by the second, like a volcano waiting to erupt.

\--

It’s in university when Wonwoo’s and Mingyu’s fingers on each of their hands could no longer count their ages combined that they start to drift apart; slowly, then all at once.

Wonwoo decides on Yonsei while Mingyu decides on Hongik. Wonwoo thinks that it’s okay, because wherever Mingyu goes, he will always be Wonwoo’s best friend.

He tells himself it’s okay, because he still talks to Mingyu whenever they both can. He tells Mingyu about the way the sunlight penetrates through the blinds of his apartment so he probably should get a new one. Wonwoo tells him about the old woman who’s always reading the same book in the library he frequents. Wonwoo tells him that he talked to her one day and she told him it’s all she reads now because it was her husband’s favorite. Wonwoo tells him he wishes he went to Hongik too because he misses Mingyu.

Mingyu has always been good with people, a far contrast from Wonwoo whose fingers are more than enough to count the number of people he is close to. So Mingyu tells him about the parties he gets invited to. Mingyu tells him about his new friend who really likes photography. Mingyu tells him he really likes the ice cream parlor a few blocks from his university. Mingyu tells him so many things except that he misses Wonwoo too.

And that’s okay because he still gets to talk to Mingyu and no matter how many people Mingyu meets, he will always be Wonwoo’s best friend.

Wonwoo pretty much still wants to write and to fly and to write about what it feels like to fly, and it’s when Mingyu visits him for the first time after months of separation that he figures he likes Mingyu too. But Mingyu also figures he doesn’t like green anymore.

Because it’s when Wonwoo is 21 and Mingyu is 20 that Mingyu decides he likes red.

Mingyu tells him in his apartment - where he still keeps his blinds even if sunlight penetrates through it - that red is for the pair of lips that tells Mingyu she loves him, for the roses Mingyu gives her when he asks her to be his girlfriend, for the color that paints her face when she answers _yes_.

It’s also then when Wonwoo thinks his bed is too small to fit both of them because he expects Mingyu to stay the night and feel him snuggle against him like a puppy again. Wonwoo doesn’t see it but red is also for the ink that he uses when he writes about his broken heart later that night after Mingyu leaves.

It’s between the lines of _she’s jealous_ and _it’s no big deal, right?_ that Wonwoo stops calling his best friend Minggu and Mingyu stops calling him Nonu because his girlfriend doesn’t like it.

And Wonwoo thinks that’s okay, but that’s when he feels for the second time how it’s like to lose something close to him.

Mingyu barely talks to him now but everytime he does, he calls him hyung. It sounds so foreign coming from Mingyu that Wonwoo double checks the caller id just to make sure it’s Mingyu he’s talking to.

Wonwoo doesn’t tell him about the crack on his ceiling from when it rained too hard. Wonwoo doesn’t tell him that he’s starting to develop a passion for filming. Wonwoo doesn’t tell him that he had his hair curled. Wonwoo still wishes he had gone to Hongik and thinks that maybe then he wouldn’t have to cry alone in his room because he misses Mingyu when Mingyu doesn’t.

\--

Wonwoo is 22 when he meets Soonyoung. It’s been 21 days - like the number of fingers Wonwoo would need to count Mingyu’s age - since Mingyu last talked to Wonwoo.

Wonwoo still pretty much likes to write and to fly and to write about what it feels like to fly, and somewhere between unanswered phone calls and eyes (they form the hands of a clock that reads 10:10, Wonwoo notices) that stay awake with Wonwoo through most of his sleepless nights , Wonwoo grows to like Soonyoung too.

He no longer gets to talk to Mingyu and he thinks that’s still okay because whatever happens, Mingyu will always be his best friend.

It’s also when Wonwoo is 22 that he starts to date Soonyoung. He doesn’t tell Mingyu because he’s already used to not telling Mingyu things. And Mingyu thinks that’s not okay.

\--

When Wonwoo is 23, he goes to a bar with his friends, and it’s when he sees the same brown eyes that used to look at him like he’s the most beautiful person in the world does he remember that it’s the day Mingyu turns 22.

Mingyu doesn’t see him and he thinks it’s better like that. But he watches Mingyu, his eyes trained on him even when he blinks away the weight of the alcohol.

He’s drunk too much but he knows it's not the alcohol making him see just how beautiful Mingyu is under flamboyant lights with his head tipped back in all his smiling glory because of something his friend had said.

He wants to touch him, just to see if he isn't dreaming. But Mingyu is a dream in himself. There's a haze surrounding him and the last thing Wonwoo sees is Mingyu looking at him before he black outs.

It’s the day after Mingyu turns 22 that Wonwoo passes by a café and sees Mingyu sipping on a cup of coffee instead of beer. This time, he’s already looking at Wonwoo and it makes Wonwoo feel like something inside of him comes alive.

Wonwoo thinks that if Mingyu can come into his life all brazen and unmindful, then he can walk up to him the same way. So he paces inside the café and sits across Mingyu.

That’s when he musters up the courage to ask Mingyu what went wrong and Mingyu tells him it’s all his fault. Wonwoo tells him not all. Mingyu tells him he’s sorry and Wonwoo does the same.

Mingyu finally, finally says he misses Wonwoo, and Wonwoo thinks it’s all going to be okay. Because no matter where they go or how many people they meet or how many heartaches they make each other feel, Mingyu will always be Wonwoo’s best friend.

Somewhere between sleepovers and pistachio ice cream dates, Mingyu starts calling him Nonu and he starts calling him Minggu again.

And that’s how Wonwoo knows everything’s going to be okay.

\--

To say he was in a state of shock was the biggest understatement when Mingyu stumbles in his apartment at three in the morning with his hair sticking out in different directions and in pajamas Wonwoo might have worn on too many occasions.

He tries to guess what might be so urgent for Mingyu to come storming in his home like this (although nothing comes close to the way he stormed into his life).

"Nonu, I know this is all too sudden but this has been going on for years now," the words come out in a rush and for a second, he looks at his best friend with wide eyes before scolding him and reminding him to breathe.

"Hey, what's the rush? I'm not going anywhere. Just..." Wonwoo inhales and Mingyu follows suit.

He patiently waits for the man in front of him to even out his breathing. All the while he tries to appear calm but a blizzard has already begun to wreck him inside.

"You are the most beautiful, most amazing person I've ever met," Mingyu starts again, and there's a newfound confidence in there. His best friend looks so young like this. It's like he's looking at 18-year-old Mingyu again, his face struck with panic after spilling paint on 19-year-old Wonwoo’s favorite book.

Wonwoo wills himself not to interrupt the younger even if he badly wants to tell Mingyu that it's him who's all of that.

"And I've kept it for quite a while because I'm a coward, but I have the courage now and I just want to say that I'm so, so in love with you, Jeon Wonwoo." The words come out in an avalanche, covering Wonwoo entirely with warmth despite its nature.

His name sounds so sweet coming from the younger's lips that he wonders if it tastes just as.

It does, he figures out seconds later when he asks Mingyu if he could kiss him and Mingyu whispers yes.

It was quick; just a brush of lips. If they had known then how precious time would be for them, he would have kissed him longer.

And maybe time was on their side that day because it seemed to have stopped - minutes, hours, days, weeks, he doesn't know how long - when he is 27 and Mingyu is 26, and he tells Mingyu he loves him too and Mingyu tells him he loves him again.

\--

Wonwoo’s not the same four-year-old boy who first felt how it’s like to lose someone close to him. He now knows what name to call the emotion that leaves a heavy weight in his chest, and this time it hurts a lot more.

He still doesn’t understand why people have to leave, and he remembers his father telling him that it would hurt, but Wonwoo thinks he’s never going to heal.

Because it’s when Wonwoo is 30 and Mingyu is 29 that Mingyu stops aging and Wonwoo stops counting because he doesn’t want to remember a world where the fingers of his hand could no longer touch Mingyu.

\--

Wonwoo is 35. He pretty much still likes to write and to fly and to write about what it feels like to fly, and he tells himself that he really, really loves Mingyu. So he writes about him again. He doesn’t keep track of how many books he’s written for and about him, but he knows that he will always be a part of his works.

He writes about how the lines on his palm never really made a ‘W’ but it’s alright because Mingyu’s initial looks better on his skin. He writes about how he realized he could never grow real wings but it’s okay because Mingyu makes him feel like flying, and somewhere out there, Wonwoo knows Mingyu has his own wings now.

He writes a thousand things about Mingyu and it feels too intimate to let anyone see, but this time he doesn’t keep it between the pages of his favorite book. He keeps it next to Mingyu because he wants Mingyu to know everything is about him.

_To my best friend and the love of my life,_

_Someone once told me that there are things we can’t see but are there—like in the creases of my shirts where your scent stays and serves as a reminder that you love to sleep in my clothes more than your own, or in the spaces between my fingers where yours fit right in, or on the valley of my back where your lips kiss the outlines of my wings, or in my heart where you are and will be—always, undeniably._


End file.
